Aggrandizer's Anniversary

With pomp reminiscent of old Imperial Germany, Adolf Hitler, Aggrandizer of the Reich, last week celebrated his 50th birthday. The representatives of conquered nations paid him humble homage. The envoys of fearful satellites rendered respectful tribute. Albert Forster, Nazi No. 1 of the Free City of Danzig, presented a document which made the Fuhrer an honorary citizen of a town he may soon appropriate. Special delegations from Germany's allies were received in special audience.

Meanwhile all diplomats of "friendly" nations (including the U. S. Chargee d'Affaires) signed the birthday register at the big new Chancellery. His Majesty the King of England sent the Fuhrer the birthday greetings he customarily sends to all rulers. However, the U. S. President, who customarily felicitates only reigning monarchs on birthdays, sent none. Anyhow, since the Fuhrer had not answered the President's request for ten years' peace (TIME, April 24), he owed the President a letter.

Church bells rang from swastika-decorated churches as the day began. The Reich's Cabinet ministers swore anew to their "faith in the word of Adolf Hitler." Nazi Party leaders gathered in the Sportspalast to renew their oaths of loyalty. The 16th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment, in which Corporal Hitler once served, got out a photographic album of the regiment's World War history.

From Propaganda Minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels came a symposium of German movies from 1910 to 1939. Labor Front Leader Dr. Robert Ley presented a Volkswagen, the cheap German-manufactured car not yet available to the public. For the Reichsbank Dr. Walther Funk gave a version of Titian's Venus at the Mirror which official Germany now accepts (although many art critics do not) as one of two authentic originals of this painting.

The common people were represented too. Three rooms and part of the main Chancellery Hall were piled high with presents. Peasants sent their native handiwork. Westphalian women knitted 6,000 pairs of socks for the Fiihrer's soldiers. Housewives got together to bake a six-foot cake. From the more militarily minded came pistols, hand grenades, an assortment of knives and daggers, a live eagle which the Fuehrer will release in the Bavarian Mountains.

The real demonstration came on the streets of Berlin. As the Fuhrer drove from the Chancellery to the Lustgarten on his way to view a military birthday parade in his honor, 2,000,000 heils greeted him. On the new Via Triumphalis, the broad East-West "axis" which Herr Hitler himself ordered cut through the heart of a fast rebuilding capital, the former corporal acted for all the world like an emperor. He wore his usual simple brown Nazi uniform, but on the cap, below a spread eagle, were gilded oak leaves encasing a swastika--the mark of the supreme military commander he is. He sat on a gilded thronelike chair placed on a raised dais covered with red plush. He was protected by a grey canopy decorated with eagles and iron crosses.

Above the Fuehrer flew 162 warplanes in formation. Before him passed in review for four hours the flower of his Army, some 40,000 men in full fighting regalia. With them passed the grimmest, most impressive war machines that Nazi Germany could muster--tanks, artillery, armored cars. Interested foreign military attaches saw little new equipment, but the representatives of small, trembling States could scarcely fail to be impressed.

Changes. Not all of Adolf Hitler's birthdays since he came to power have been celebrated thus. In 1933, only three months after he first became Chancellor, the public birthday celebration was confined to the wearing of edelweiss, the Fuehrer's favorite flower. The first birthday parade was held in 1935, but it was small compared to those yet to come and to that held last week.

In six years of power Herr Hitler has probably changed less physically than do most men from 44 to 50. The lines in his face are only slightly deeper. He has added some 25 pounds to his weight and four inches to his girth, but that is much less than some of his lieutenants have gained. The early Hitler accent was typical of the Austrian civil service class into which he was born. Educated Austrians declare it had a Czech flavor. Now he has a more cultivated speech. The voice is noticeably coarser and Herr Hitler, despite the assurances of six attending physicians, is still worried about cancer of the throat.

Fuhrer Hitler has never been much of a reader, but he has a passion for the cinema. He sometimes has three or four full-length pictures run off for him at one sitting, knows the cast of every German movie comedy. (Another memory feat: ability to give by heart names and descriptions of all U. S., British warships.) Favorite cinema repeaters now are the U. S. films Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Viva Villa! He likes variety shows and his old preference for Wagnerian operas seems to have given way to light operas such as The Merry Widow.

Funny Man? Even more significant are the changes in his psychological climate. The well-known Hitler craving for solitude has developed even more, but with it has come a greater fondness for entertaining. Never has he been host to as many guests as during this year. Youngest of the three big European dictators (Mussolini is 55, Stalin about 60), he works the least of any of them. He rarely bothers with details, has no capacity for long, tedious hours at his desk, is able to delegate power to trusted subordinates.

Probably few national leaders have been so misunderstood and so tragically underestimated. The French regarded the man who was to relegate them to a second-rate continental power as a funny man with a Charlie Chaplin mustache. They soon learned better. Others thought the Fuehrer often acted from vanity, wrath and petulance, whereas nothing has become more evident than that he has followed a straight line of policy. He has long been pictured as emotionally unbalanced, but probably few men in public life have their emotions so completely under control. The man who in six short years has redrawn the map of Europe, overturned the old standards of political behavior and made the world listen to his every word, can turn his emotions on and off at will.

Messiah. Fundamental Hitler nature is Austrian--mild, appreciative of beauty and art, sentimental, loving display. But long ago his chief underlings went vigorously to work to build a higher and higher pedestal under him. His contacts with common life around him have become more and more remote so that he has come to accept himself as a Messiah. So surrounded is he by adoring millions that his occasional megalomaniac outbursts have become more frequent. He is more autocratic and noncommittal than ever even to his old party leaders. He will tolerate disagreement only on the tiniest of details. His deep guffaws are more frightening than ever to adults, although children still respond to them.

Meantime his decisions are based on the opinions of an ever-narrowing group of advisers. The adoring Nazi Deputy Leader Rudolf Hess, who follows his leader even in his moods, is still constantly at his side. But the Fuehrer has become so inaccessible to most of his Cabinet that only Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Dr. Goebbels are now able to ask for and get private interviews. Five-sevenths along his Biblically allotted span of life, this strange man has at least the satisfaction of knowing that he has become the most formidable political tactician of his century. Where that will finally get him, neither he nor anyone else knows.

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